Let me skip 1971 in this post. Instead, I’ll begin by marking the other December anniversary, one that will have a particular relevance for Pakistan and Bangladesh in 2013. And I’ll note the parallels between the post-1971 developments in the two wings of former United Pakistan.

A year before the guns fell silent in Bangladesh, peoples of Pakistan — with two wings then — voted in the first election in their history held on universal suffrage. The elections, supervised under an army regime, were accepted as free and fair by all parties.

Why did the army — which ruled directly for the previous 12 years, and exerted a heavy influence for the remainder of the country’s history until then, and sadly since, as we shall discuss below — allow free elections?

It was partly because the army feared a repeat of the 1968-69 urban uprising — proportionately speaking, larger than anything seen anywhere in the world in 2011 – which toppled the regime of Ayub Khan. The junta that came to power figured that relatively moderate politicians like Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and Zulfikar Ali Bhutto might be easier to deal with than the radical students who swore by Che Guevara and Chairman Mao. The army intelligence also expected a divided parliament, with Mujib’s Awami League winning no more than a third of the seats, Bhutto’s People’s Party getting even less, leaving a dozen or so pro-army and so-called Islam-pasand parties taking the rest.

Of course, the army calculations were way off. The election produced a resounding victory for Bhutto in the west — whose party won 83 out of 138 seats. But this landslide was dwarfed by Mujib’s, whose party won 160 of 162 seats in the east — one of the clearest mandate anyone received in history. And both men proved intransigent after the election. Bhutto could not afford to sit in the opposition benches and lose the ‘bastion of power’ that was (West) Pakistani establishment. The junta’s bigger problem, however, was Mujib, for whom the six-points formula of maximum autonomy for the eastern wing was non-negotiable. The wars of 1971 were the result of the army’s final miscalculation to launch the Operation Searchlight.

Both Pakistan and Bangladesh will hold elections in 2013. Neither elections will be under martial law. Both countries have popularly elected, civilian governments, which will finish their terms, and seek re-election. Questions of army calculations about whether to allow an election or not simply do not arise in either country.

That’s the good news. The bad news is that neither elections are expected to go as smoothly as the ones in more mature democracies, including both countries’ common neighbour. The risk of army intervention — which may well be welcomed by an uncomfortably large section of their respective establishments — remains high in both countries. Over four decades after the first free and fair election, representative democracy — never mind any notion of participatory democracy — is yet to take root in the successor states of the former two-winged Pakistan.

Indeed, it’s remarkable to see the parallels in the post-1971 political developments of the two countries.

A magical realist masterpiece, Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children has weird and improbable events and people juxtaposed against the history of the 20th century South Asia up to the late 1970s. One such improbable, and yet true, event was that at the time of writing, and thus the story’s culmination, military rulers of the erstwhile two wings of Pakistan had the same first name. Both successor states started with larger-than-life charismatic leaders, whose rules ended in tragic denouement inconceivable in 1972. Both states experienced long periods of direct army rule. In both countries, electoral democracy has meant two mutually antagonistic parties/coalitions who differ little on policy, but much on personality and the thirst for power over patronage and privilege. Both countries have experienced increasing religious extremism. More recently, in both countries, judiciary and media are experimenting with new found powers, not always to the best effect.

Throw in the political economy of NGO-led development in Bangladesh, or the misfortune of being next to a theatre of the Great Game for Pakistan, and it’s easier to see why democracy may have had such a hard time in these countries. Indeed, with increasing NGO activities in Pakistan and the Great Game coming to Myanmar — a theatre closer to Bangladesh — both countries have much to learn from each other’s recent misfortune.

Let me end with one particular lesson from the 1970s that both governments seeking re-election in 2013 should not forget.

From the vantage point of December 1971, one might have expected some form of military involvement in Bangladeshi politics. The nucleus of the Bangladesh army was the victorious Mukti Bahini, and its commanders like Ziaur Rahman might have expected some say in the new country’s affairs — historically, states founded by guns tend to give armed men some (if not all) power. It should have been a different matter in what was left of Pakistan.

If there was a state where the army rule, directly or otherwise, should have been thoroughly repudiated, it should have been Pakistan after December 1971. Army rule had lost half the country. A quarter of the army itself was taken prisoner-of-war by the ‘hated enemy’. The country was bankrupt, with its major port damaged. The idea that generals could save Pakistan should have died in the bloodbath of Dhaka.

Of course, it didn’t.

Bhutto used the army to silence legitimate dissent in Balochistan. And then, in 1977, he tried to rig an election that he might have won anyway, resulting in months of street violence and political gridlock, which paved the way for Gen Zia-ul-Huq’s grim rule.

Fast forward to 2013 and the coming elections. Army’s corporate interests, real and perceived threats of violent jihad, global geo-political machinations — all these factors notwithstanding, the most likely trigger for yet another ‘rescue operation’ by the generals in either country will be the politicians’ inability to hold a free and fair election and honour the results.

A December prayer for the two wings then — hold the elections, heed the results.

—-

This was written in December 2012 for a Pakistani magazine. I missed the deadline. It’s cross-posted in AoD.

For the first time in its history, a democratically elected, civilian government has completed a term in Pakistan.

The above is from work done by Maher Hasan and Jemma Dridi, two IMF economists, on how Islamic banks performed during the global financial crisis (and the period leading up to it).  In a 2010 working paper, they use bank level data from 120 Islamic and conventional banks from eight countries* over the period 2007-10 to explore why Islamic banks might have performed differently during the crisis. 

They found that while Islamic banks were more profitable than conventional in the boom years leading up to the crisis, this was not driven by risk-taking.  Specifically:

Shariah principles precluded IBs from financing or investing in the kind of instruments [such as collateralized debt obligations and credit default swaps] that have adversely affected their conventional competitors and triggered the global financial crisis.  

However, in 2009, Islamic banks’ profitability suffered relative to conventional banks because of too much exposure to any one sector or borrower.

The authors also found that larger Islamic banks did better than smaller ones, policy implication being that “…developing the industry and increasing competition should be achieved through establishing large and well managed IBs that can compete with existing banks”.

In a follow up article, the authors highlighted challenges facing the industry and policymakers: need for appropriate institutional arrangements for the resolution of troubled financial institutions; lack of harmonized accounting and regulatory standards; and insufficient expertise.

I started this series before the Shahbag Awakening interest in the Islami Bank Bangladesh.  Whatever happens to that institution, there is a demand for Islamic banking and finance in Bangladesh.  Experiences and challenges elsewhere should be studied carefully by our policymakers.

*Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait, Malaysia, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, UAE.

- Fascinating.  There will be a post.  (Also this and this).

- Beyond Shahbag: the verdicts; fairness; the counteroffensive; monopoly of the state; collateral damage; money trail; old criminals; British connection.

- Islamists: governance is hard; name game;

- Bookstores: recent past; near future.

- Roman money.

- Chavez’s legacy.

- Piratonomics.

To mountains of the moon

Alvarez survived that night, and partly thanks to Shankar’s care, was on his feet within a couple of weeks.  Another week later, he said it was time to move on.  Shankar knew what he wanted.  He said: Do you remember what you said that night?  About the yellow diamond?

The old man had been silent about his past after the first night.  In fact, most of the time Alvarez just sat there silently.  He replied: You know, it’s not that I haven’t thought about it.  But are you brave enough to chase the rainbow?

Shankar: May be I am, may be not.  Only one way to find out.  If you’re game then I’ll wire the company today to find a replacement for me.

Alvarez: Wire them then.  But think about it first.  Prospecting more often than not leads to nothing.  I know an eighty years old who found nothing — but every time he claimed to have come close.  Spent his entire life prospecting Australian deserts and African veldts.  

It was another ten days or so before they headed out.  First stop was Kisumu.  From there they took a steamer to Mwanza, across the Lake Victoria.  It was a British steamer.  Cabin was reserved for whites only.  They took the deck.  Other passengers included African women with children at the back, and a group of Masai coolies going home on leave. 

From Mwanza, the next destination was Tabora, three hundred miles south.  From then they went to Ujiji, a port on the Lake Tanganyika, another three hundred miles west.

Alvarez warned Shankar about travelling through Tanganyika: Tanganyika is a very dangerous place.  There is a kind of fly here, if it bites you get sleeping sickness.  There’s no cure for that. 

Most of the trek was grasslands.  And this was just as much a lion territory as Kenya was. 

At one place there were thousands of giraffe, zebra and deer.  Shankar had never seen so many animals in his life.  Giraffes were not afraid of them at all.  But the deers were very frisky. 

There was a small bungalow about ten miles out of Tabora.  An European hunter was staying there.  He was very happy to see Alvarez.  Seeing Shankar, he asked: An East Indian.  Where did you get him?  Your coolie?

Alvarez: My son.

How do you mean?

Alvarez described in great detail how Shankar had saved his life.  Of course he didn’t mention where they were heading, or for what purpose.

The hunter was very impressed.  He invited them into the bungalow for the night.  They had canned sardine and tomato juice for dinner. 

The hunter had a small gramophone.  He put on a record.  They were talking about the new railways when a lion was heard from rather close.  The hunter said: Tanganyika is full of lions, and compared with elsewhere in East Africa, there seems to be more man eaters.

They started again the following morning.  The hunter also warned them about the tsetse fly.

Their trek cut through the grasslands.  Alvarez said: Be very careful, and stay right behind me.  There are definitely lions around.

Alvarez was what one would call a crack shot, that is, he seldom missed.  But Shankar was not reassured.  After all, he saw in Kenya that when the lion attacked, it was so swift that one wouldn’t have enough time to even load the rifle.

They had to camp in the middle of nowhere.  Until then, they had stayed in a village or town every night.  Alvarez said: There’s no village until Kigoma, and that is still fifty miles away.

It was well after the midnight when Alvarez awoke Shankar: Get up.  There’s a beast outside.  Get your gun ready.

Shankar heard the beast, or rather, he heard its heavy breathing.  Shankar was about to get our of the bed when the old man stopped him.  The very next moment, the beast tried to push into the camp.  Alvarez fired two shots.  Shankar also fired a shot. 

And then it became quiet.

Tip toeing outside the tent with the torchlight on, they saw a huge lion pushing into the eastern side of the tent.

It hadn’t died yet, but was severly injured.  Two more bullets and it breathed its last breath.

Looking at the starlit sky, Alvarez said: There is a lot night left.  Leave that here.  Let’s finish our sleep.  Both returned to the tent — soon enough Shankar was surprised to notice Alvarez snoring.  Shankar couldn’t sleep.

Within half an hour, it appeared to Shankar that all the lions of Tanganyika started roaring in competition with Alvarez’s snore.  That was one awesome roar.  It wasn’t the first time that Shankar heard lions roar, but this was a night he would always remember.  The roar was from within 20 feet of the camp.

Alvarez woke up again.  Said: Ah, not letting us sleep.  Must be the partner of the other lion.  Be careful.  Nasty beast.

A very troubling night.  The campfire was almost dead.  Beyond that, darkness.  The only separation between them and the beast bereaving its companion is the fabric of the tent.  Roaring loudly the beast sometimes comes close to the tent, sometimes moves away, sometimes circles it.  The lion left just before dawn.  They also started their journey.

Delwar Hossain Sayedee, an Islamic preacher and a senior leader of Jamaat-e-Islami Bangladesh, the country’s largest Islam-pasand party, was sentenced to death on 28 February for war crimes committed during the 1971 Liberation War. Within hours, Jamaat cadres and activists clashed violently with police and law enforcement agencies. Scores have been killed in some of the worst political violence the country has experienced in recent years.

Five other senior Jamaat leaders, including its current and former chiefs, are being prosecuted for war crimes committed in 1971. Another leader was sentenced to life imprisonment on 5 February. That sentence triggered what has come to be called the Shahbag Awakening—a month of largely peaceful gathering of tens of thousands of people in the middle of Dhaka. A key demand of the largely government-supported Awakening is to ban Jamaat.

Will the Jamaat be banned? The ruling Awami League has a three-fourths majority in parliament, while the Jamaat is a key ally of the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party. A general election is expected before the year is over. So there are complex political calculations involved. Meanwhile, even if the party survives, how will it perform if its top leaders are convicted (and possibly executed) for war crimes?

A history of violence

Maulana Abul Ala Maududi, an Islamic scholar from Hyderabad, founded the Jamaat-e-Islami Hind in 1941. The Islamic revivalist organisation opposed the Partition of India as it would leave Indian Muslims divided. Further, Maududi considered MA Jinnah and other Muslim League leaders to be insufficiently Islamic in their personal lives. Nonetheless, when Pakistan came into existence, Maududi moved his party to Lahore to help create an Islamic state, where the party would be the sole arbiter of what counts as Islamic.

Eschewing mass politics, and rejecting western-style electoral, representative democracy as anything more than a means to an end, the Jamaat’s strategy — in both Pakistan and Bangladesh — has been one of ‘infiltration’: putting party faithfuls in key positions in state institutions, gain a foothold in key non-state sectors, and then use the ‘infiltrated’ to attain state power through a successful putsch when the time is right.

Like many other revolutionary parties of both left and right, the Jamaat is not shy about deploying violence to upset existing political order and advance its agenda. For example, Maududi instigated anti-Ahmadiyya violence in 1953, which led to the imposition of martial law in Lahore. Martial law authorities sentenced him to death, but the sentence was commuted because of public pressure.

The Jamaat’s student wing, Islami Jamiat-e-Talaba (IJT) / Islami Chhatra Sangha (ICS) played an active role in the popular uprisings that toppled Field Marshal Ayub Khan‘s regime in 1969. Pakistan held its first democratic election 1970. The story of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s victory on the issue of maximum autonomy for East Pakistan, to the liberation of Dhaka from Pakistani occupation on 16 December 1971, is relatively well known. The role of the Jamaat in 1970 and 1971 is perhaps less so.

The Jamaat emerged as the second largest party in East Pakistan, winning 4-6% of votes, and one seat in the 300-member provincial assembly (against AL’s sweeping over 70% votes tally and 288 seats). After the bloodbath of March-April 1971, the Jamaat’s expectation was that the army would militarily defeat the Mukti Bahini resistance quite comfortably, but would find it hard to fill the political vacuum created by the elimination of the Awami League. It expected to fill that vacuum. Ghulam Azam, its East Pakistan chief, emerged as a key pro-Pakistan politician during the war. Members of IJT/ICS formed the nucleus of pro-Pakistan militias set up by the army.Matiur Rahman Nizami, head of the East Pakistan IJT/ICS, led a particularly fierce group called the Al Badr whose death squads are alleged to have killed several prominent progressive intellectuals and activists during the war.

Of course, Pakistan lost the war.

The Jamaat faced considerable difficulty in the new country. Even before the war was over, the provisional government of Bangladesh banned religion-based political parties. The prohibition was retained in the constitution that came into effect in December 1972. After the liberation of Dhaka, some of its leaders, including Azam, escaped to Pakistan, the Gulf and the United Kingdom. Others went into hiding. Azam tried to lead a movement to “recover East Pakistan”, which fizzled out when Pakistani prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto received Mujib in Lahore for the 1974 Organization of Islamic Countries summit.

At the local level, party members abstained from direct political activities, concentrating on social work instead. These efforts were co-ordinated by Maolana Abdur Rahim, a senior leader of the provincial party before 1971, who returned to Dhaka in 1974.

Jamaat reloaded

Bangladesh politics was jolted in 1975. Responding to economic dislocation and political instability caused by the war and natural disasters, Mujib imposed a draconian one-party rule, and then was killed in a military coup in August of the same year. This was followed by several counter-coups and mutinies, until Major General Ziaur Rahmanemerged as the country’s de facto ruler.

Zia gradually reintroduced electoral politics, and lifted bans on all parties, including the religion-based ones. However,  the Jamaat remained prohibited because the Election Commission was not convinced of the party’s commitment to Bangladesh’s sovereignty. Nonetheless, six of its members were elected to the 300-member assembly under the banner of the Islamic Democratic League. Azam returned to Bangladesh on a Pakistan passport around this time (his citizenship was revoked by the Bangladesh government in 1973). The IJT/ICS was also re-launched under the name of Islami Chhatra Shibir. The Jamaat formally started operating under its own name in 1982 after Lt. Gen HM Ershad assumed power in a coup.

From then on, the Jamaat has sought to regain the legitimacy it lost because of its violent opposition to the country’s creation.

After several round of internal debates, the party entered electoral politics in the 1980s. It had made tactical alliance with each major political actor in the country in the decades since. It participated in the parliamentary election of 1986, held under martial law, with the Awami League, even though all opposition parties had previously promised to boycott it. In 1990, the Jamaat joined the AL, BNP and the leftists in an urban uprising that toppled the Ershad regime. In 1991, BNP formed a government with the Jamaat’s support. By the mid-1990s, the Jamaat had once again allied with the AL in street protests against the BNP government. It reconciled with BNP ahead of the parliamentary election of 2001. The electoral alliance formed then has survived the intervening years.

Parliamentary activities notwithstanding, the party retains its infiltration strategy. This was pursued most vigorously between 2001 and 2006. When the BNP led alliance (of which  the Jamaat was a key partner) won the 2001 election, the Jamaat demanded two things. First, they wanted a suitable official post for the former Al Badr chief Matiur Rahman Nizami, who had been the party’s parliamentary head in the early 1990s, and had replaced Azam as the party chief by the end of the decade. (The Jamaat is the only major party in Bangladesh where leaders retire for fresh faces.) Second, the party’s number two, Ali Ahsan Mujahid (who was not an MP), had to be made the minister of social welfare. The social welfare ministry was chosen because it was responsible for the country’s massive NGO sector and sociocultural organizations throughout the country. In 1971, the Jamaat had targeted progressive voices with violence. Between 2001-2006, it made things difficult for progressive activities, while generously supporting Islamic institutions that adhered to its interpretation of the religion.

In the quarter century since the party’s relaunch, the Jamaat has made considerable inroads in several non-state sectors as well. Islami Bank, whose management is affiliated with the Jamaat, has become the third largest bank in the country. Jamaat-supported hospitals and coaching centres provide affordable health care and education to urban, working and the lower middle classes. The party has particularly strong financial ties with countries in the Gulf, which helps with these enterprises. Funding and ideological support also comes from the radical Islamic discourse among the diaspora Bangladeshi community in the UK.

The above do not, however, imply that the Jamaat abandoned violence. Quite the contrary. Instead of aiming to become a nationwide mass party, it remained focused on 50 or so seats bordering India. In the Jamaat’s assessment of 1971, Indian intervention was about stopping the Jamaat from coming to power. Thus, according to party literature, the logic behind its geographic concentration is that in the event of another Indian intervention to thwart a Jamaat-led government, these areas will become centers of resistance. Consistent with that strategy, the Islami Chhatra Shibir sought to gain control of two large universities in Chittagong and Rajshahi. They were largely successful in the effort during the 1980s, by using brutality usually not matched by student wings of other parties.

Calculus of consent

By the beginning of the 1990s,  the Jamaat appeared to have been successful in its quest for legitimacy. When President Ershad was forced to resign in December 1990 after several weeks of protests by university students, the then party chief Abbas Ali Khan appeared on national TV with the leaders of AL, BNP and a leftist alliance to appeal for public calm and national unity. In the election held two months later, the Jamaat achieved its best showing ever:

(Note: *Provincial assembly, Jamaat failed to win any of 162 East Pakistan seats in the national assembly. **As Islamic Democratic League.  ***In alliance with BNP.)

Why did the other parties consent to Jamaat’s legitimacy?

For Ershad, the answer was his own legitimacy, or lack thereof. Sheikh Mujib was heralded as the country’s founding father. The post-1975 strongman Zia derived his legitimacy at least partly from being a war hero (as a major in Pakistan army, he made an iconic radio speech from Chittagong at the beginning of the Liberation War). In contrast, Ershad was seen as an ambitious general who usurped power illegally. The Jamaat helped him by participating in the election that gave his coup a constitutional cover.

Neither of the two larger parties — AL, led by Mujib’s daughter Hasina Wajed since 1981, and BNP, led by Zia’s widow Khaleda Zia since 1983 — faced a legitimacy problem.  Their deficit was elsewhere: they have never trusted each other (the reasons for which are a subject of another essay). Coming out of the 1991 election, where both parties got less than a third of votes (but because of the vagaries of first-past-the-post electoral system, BNP got 140 seats against AL’s 92), the Jamaat emerged as a potential kingmaker.

In a groundbreaking 2000 analysis of previous election results, the political strategist Nazim Kamran Choudhury showed that if BNP, the Jamaat and other right-wing parties were to enter into an electoral alliance, AL would suffer a massive defeat.  That analysis was the basis of the BNP-Jamaat alliance, which won 45% of votes and 217 seats against AL’s 40% vote and 62 seats in the 2001 election.

There was, however, more than just electoral calculations to Jamaat’s appeal. In fact, voting arithmetic by itself might have hampered a BNP-Jamaat alliance. In 12 of the 18 seats won by the party in 1991, the BNP came in second.  Meanwhile, in the urban seats around Dhaka that usually swings in every election, the Jamaat’s support is virtually non-existent. What it lacked in terms of voting power, however, the party more than made up for through street prowess. By the late 1990s, the Jamaat boasted of the largest and most ideologically motivated cadre base of any party in Bangladesh. Election campaigns in Bangladesh, as elsewhere in South Asia, are feisty affairs, and the utility of its cadre force is self-evident.

By the mid-2000s, the Jamaat appeared to outshine its larger alliance partner. While the BNP was mired in corruption scandals, the Jamaat was seen as relatively clean, and consistent with its mantra: Allah’s law and honest men’s rule. After the quasi-coup of January 2007, the BNP seemed to be in disarray, and many expected Jamaat to emerge as the main alternative to the AL.  But, its role in 1971 continued to shackle the party.

While Azam played down 1971 — evading answers or shifting the discussion whenever the war and the party’s role in it was raised — the newer leaders made a series of confrontational statements in October 2007 that tried to rewrite the history of 1971, erasing any allegation of war crimes, or even denying the very fact of the war or any atrocity.

This provoked a backlash, and the demand for trials of its leaders (and a few individuals in other parties) on war crimes charges gathered momentum.

Crime and punishment

This was not the first time that a citizens’ movement demanded that alleged war criminals of 1971 are brought to justice. While the immediate post-war years might have been the best time to hold to account those who committed war crimes, the 1970s was a decade of death and deluge for Bangladesh, and successive governments were overpowered with existential crises to hold any trial. And yet, there has always been strong social antipathy towards alleged war criminals. Ghulam Azam, for example, faced shoes and sandals at the national mosque in 1981.

When President Ershad appointed two alleged war criminals — Maolana Abdul Mannan, now deceased, and Salahuddin Quader Chowdhury, now being prosecuted — to his cabinet in the 1980s, a series of brave investigative journalism by Shahadat Chowdhury and Lt Col Quazi Nuruzzaman, both Mukti Bahini veterans, brought the horrendous crimes to light.

A citizens’ movement for war crimes trial started in the early 1990s, when the Jamaat emerged as a key force in politics and both major parties started courting Ghulam Azam’s blessings. The movement was led by Jahanara Imam, whose memoir about 1971, when she lost her son and husband, is considered to be one of the most vivid descriptions of life in occupied Dhaka.

In each of the above cases, the citizenry tried to hit back after the Jamaat had pushed the envelop just that much further. In each case, the citizens’ outburst fizzled out as major parties stayed put.  Each case until 2008, that is.

In the lead up to the 2008 election, war crimes trial emerged as a key demand among urban, educated youth — an increasingly influential demographics.  It’s hard to say exactly how crucial the war crimes trial issue was for the AL’s landslide victory in the election. Several opinion polls suggested that voters cared about the prices of essentials or law and order more than any other issue.  However, these same polls also suggested that some form of trial had wide public support. Whereas BNP was in a formal electoral alliance with the Jamaat, the AL made war crimes trial a key election promise.

The AL government initiated war crimes trial proceedings in 2010. Several Jamaat leaders were arrested and charged, as were two BNP politicians, and most recently an AL member. Three men have been convicted so far. It was the sentencing of one of them that triggered the Shahbag Awakening.

Abdul Quader Mollah was found guilty of involvement in a massacre of several hundred villagers north of Dhaka. A death sentence was expected to follow the verdict.  But this did not happen. Given the history of Jamaat striking backdoor deals and tacit alliances with other parties, Mollah’s sentence was greeted with much cynicism and anger. There was speculation of an AL-Jamaat détente whereby the Jamaat’s leaders’ lives were to be spared in return for Jamaat breaking its alliance with BNP.

It’s against that backdrop that the Shahbag Awakening began.

Whither Jamaat?

Unlike most other recent social media-driven urban protests around the world, the Shahbag Awakening has enjoyed full government backing. And yet, the Awami Leauge has shown little interest in banning the Jamaat-e-Islami. Electoral calculations are obviously at play.  The feasibility of enforcing a ban is another key consideration. Experiences elsewhere — Turkey’s Islamist parties, Thaksin Sinawatra’s supporters in Turkey — suggest that following any ban, the Jamaat will simply resurface in another name.

Regardless of whether the party is formally banned, it has experienced severe restrictions on its ability to function as a political party under the current government. Its top tier leaders are in jail for alleged war crimes, and the second tier are in jail for opposing the war crimes trial process. Much of the third and fourth tier has gone underground to avoid arrest. Its grass-root meetings have been frequently disrupted by local administration.

Meanwhile, independent of the demand for trying alleged war criminals, the Jamaat has been affected by developments in Islam-pasand politics both locally and globally.

Maududi was not the only Islamic scholar calling for an Islamic renaissance in post-British India, nor was the Jamaat the only Islamic revivalist movement. In the Bangladeshi context, the Jamaat has been the largest and most organised political movement inspired by Islam.  But the Deoband-inspired Tabligh Jamaat, a socio-religious and strictly apolitical organisation, has far more adherents. Then there are the qaumi madrassahs and various local pirs who consider Maududi’s interpretation of Islam as heresy.

The Jamaat has always faced competition from other Islamist parties and movements. Whereas it has successfully fended off such competition in the past, its ability to continue to do so is not assured.

Making things more complicated for the Jamaat are global developments. Unlike Islamist organisations in the Middle East, the Jamaat has no ‘resistance myth’ to rely on. There is no foreign military presence in Bangladesh, and the Jamaat has neither the need nor the inclination (recall, it has sought to regain legitimacy through the parliamentary path) for anti-western politics. This has, however, meant that more radical elements of the diaspora (and globalised Islamists at home) have found organisations like Hizbut Tahrir more attractive.

Faced with war crimes charges on the one hand and stiffer competition from newer Islamists on the other, the Jamaat has had significant internal debates recently.

One faction, led by what is understood as the business wing of the party (with significant financial connections in the Gulf), wants to reboot the party along the lines of the Turkish AKP. Mir Quasim Ali, a business tycoon, and Barrister Abdur Razzaq are often touted as potential leaders of such a revamped party. Crucially, Razzaq faces no war crimes allegation, and many younger members prefer not to be burdened with the legacy of 1971.  Some speculate that the ruling AL condones, if not blesses, such a scenario. A revamped Jamaat would draw votes away from the BNP and benefit the AL. The idea has takers in the western (and Indian and Chinese) diplomatic missions too — they would much rather see a ‘mildly Islamist’ party engaged in parliamentary politics than a clandestine militant group.

However, the Shahbag Awakening has made any discernible AL overture to ‘moderate’ Jamaat leaders less likely. In addition to banning the Jamaat, the Awakening calls for social boycott and government actions against banks, businesses and social service providers linked with Jamaat. Since neither Ali nor Razzaq have any significant hold over the party machinery, without access to funds and patronage these businesses and NGOs provide, this faction will have little chance to win over their more hardline party colleagues. It is, in fact, quite possible that these ‘moderates’ will eventually gravitate towards, and strengthen, the BNP.

The hardline faction is led by former Chhatra Shibir men who saw the triumph of violence in university campuses in Chittagong and Rajshahi. They are inspired by various Arab uprisings, and dream of emulating them in Bangladesh. Since November, they have taken to coordinated violence across Dhaka and other cities.

It is unlikely that Bangladesh will experience anything remotely resembling developments in the Arab world. For one thing, Bangladesh has regular elections, where the incumbent is usually booted out. This provides a major outlet for anti-incumbent frustrations, and rule out a Syria-style civil war. Further, the Jamaat is simply not as popular as the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood or the Tunisian An-Nahda. A recent opinion poll in January pegged the Jamaat’s support at 1%.

Violent clashes between the Jamaat and law enforcement agencies may yet have unfortunate consequences for Bangladesh. After he was sentenced to death, a rumour circulated around the country that the convicted war criminal Delawar Hossain Sayedee’s face was visible, only to the faithful, on the moon. Failure to see it was indicative of either personal impiety or the Godless nature of the state and its ruling elite. Angered by the latter possibility, thousands attacked police stations and government buildings in the northern district of Bogra.  The Army had to be deployed to pacify the crowd.

And therein lies the risk. Bangladesh has an unfortunate history of military interventions. Any political instability raises the risk of yet another coup. Indeed, Jamaat supporters have been openly calling for military intervention, with images like this being circulated through Facebook and other social media:

That said, one must not overstate the possibility of an army intervention, which has demonstrated utmost professionalism in recent years.

Further, the Jamaat does not have an unlimited capacity to instigate violence, which points to another potential source of instability. There are former Jamaat members who found the party too moderate when it was in government in the 2000s and too pusillanimous in opposition since. Some of them joined the Harkatul Jihad and the Jagrata Muslim Janata Bangladesh to pursue violent jihad in the mid-2000s. Both groups were effectively suppressed in 2006-2007. If the Jamaat disintegrates under pressure, some of its more radical elements may well return to the ways of the bomb.

The people who lead the Jamaat are all old men. Most of them are being tried for war crimes. Regardless of the way these trials end, these old men will not be with us for much longer.  Their successors will have to make some major choices for the party, with major consequences for Bangladesh.

Earlier posted at Kafila and AoD.

I could have titled this post after the Monty Python classic, because it is something completely unrelated to Shahbag, Jamaat-e-Islami or war crimes trial.  And it’s a ‘good news story’ post.

According to the government measure, about half the people (48.9% to be precise) were below the poverty line in 2000.  By 2010, less than a third (31.5%) were officially considered poor.  By World Bank’s estimates, the proportion of people living on less than $1.25 a day fell from 58.6% to 43.3% in that decade.  The share of people living on less than $2 a day also fell in  that period.  These are shown in the chart (data: World Bank World Development Indicators).

And a host of other indicators of human welfare suggest that the last decade saw unprecedented improvement in living standards.  Under governments of both the major party as well as a technocratic one, despite natural disasters and political upheavals including a de facto coup and jihadi violence, tens of millions of people escaped dire poverty.

That is an undeniable good news.

But what actually led to the decline in poverty? 

In answering that question, it is useful to understand poverty, as defined by the statisticians, is usually a consumption measure.  That is, a person is defined as poor if their consumption falls below a certain quantity.  We can think of four broad reasons behind increases in per capita consumption (and thus decline in poverty):

• smaller households — less mouth to feed, more food per mouth;
• higher non-labour income — subsidies, welfare payments, aid, remittance;
• higher labour income;
• more consumption from a given income — this one is tricky, see below. 

Any decline in poverty as a result of three of these factors is not likely to be sustained beyond a certain period.  Demographic change is a one-off matter — once you go from a seven kids to two or one, you can’t do that again.  Redistribution of income, or remittance, or foreign aid cannot be maintained indefinitely.  And you can’t indefinitely consume more than your income.

Sustainable decline in poverty, therefore, has to come from rise in labour income.  And according to the analysis by four World Bank economists, increase in labour income explains the decline in poverty in Bangladesh.  Specifically, of the 17 percentage point fall in the official poverty ratio (share of people living below the poverty line) during the 2000s, about half (8 percentage point) can be attributed to rising returns from farm – underscoring the importance of farm productivity.  Rising returns from non-farm assets contributed to another 3 percentage points.  Poverty also declined because people became more educated (nearly 1 percentage point) and people moved to better paid sectors and education (nearly 2 percentage points).

There may be more good news.  According to the authors, consumption-income ratio fell during the 2000s, which added to poverty.  While this may be true as a statistical matter, the underlying economics is actually quite positive.  A fall in consumption-income ratio is also a rise in savings.  What the numbers show is that people are saving more.  This doesn’t necessarily mean a good thing — if people save more because they are afraid of the future, or because there is no opportunity to spend their money, that’s clearly bad.  But people may also save more because they become more hopeful about the future.

My working hypothesis is that savings has risen because people have something to save from and something to save for.  If that hypothesis is correct, it is good news indeed.

*Inchauste G. Oivieri S, Saavedra J, Winkler H, (September 2012), What is behind the decline in poverty since 2000?  Evidence form Bangladesh, Peru and Thailand, Policy Research Working Paper 6199, World Bank.

- Why is there a Bangla song in a British adaptation of a Russian classic?

- Shahbag: questions, bloggers, voices, future, radicalisation.

- Police brutality, and British connection.

- Future of food prices.

- Game theory in action.  (Hat tip: Dhaka Shohor).

- Jamaat reloaded, and not banned. 

- Better than sorry.

An analysis of unfolding events since Friday makes for some rather uncomfortable conclusions for me.  And yet, there are times when one ought to make a stand, even if it means taking a side.  I believe now is such a time.  Over the fold is why this blog rejects tomorrow’s hartal.

In the current political theatre, the central character is Jamaat-e-Islami.  The Shahbag Awakening started as a reaction against a possible Jamaat-Awami backdoor deal.  A month on, I think such a deal looks very remote right now.  It is very difficult to imagine a situation where any of the Jamaat leaders still being tried might get a Quader Mollah treatment of a guilty verdict with a less-than-maximum sentence.  As things stand, Ghulam Azam and others are looking at either acquittal or a death sentence.

That is, Jamaat cannot save its top leaders through any detente with the government.  It then has two options — the legal, and extra-legal.  I don’t need to share David Begman’s scepticism to note that the legal option is not playing out all that well for Jamaat.  Hence, the violence.  This much I said on Friday.  Let me elaborate a bit on the violence.

If Basherkella is any guide, Jamaat’s ability to use technology and social media to destabilise the country is impressive.  Also impressive is its ability to use young men as cannon fodder.  Since violence erupted on Thursday, several dozen Jamaat-Shibir men have been killed by the law enforecement agencies.  By several video footages doing the rounds (too gruesome for this blog — easily available in the net for anyone interested), these encounters have been extremely violent, even by Bangladeshi standards.

In addition to violence against the police, which started back in October-November, we have seen crass manipulation of religious sentiment in the form of Sayedee-sighting (which, frankly, seems quite contrary to Islam’s strict monotheism — but hey, what do I know), attacks on minority communities, and rumour that Ghulam Azam has died under custody.  There is a non-trivial probability of a major terrorist attack.

But Jamaat does not have an unlimited supply of young men.  Delwar Hossain Sayedee is hardly the most senior of its leaders, and he has merely been sentenced, not hanged.  Why then is the violent reaction now?

This image — doing the rounds — might give a clue.  These strategies are to instigate violence, not win hearts and minds (although, it’s a bonus if that happens).  The aim is primarily to create a situation where the army feels compelled to step in.

What might such a situation look like?  I’ve said many times in the past that the rank-and-file of our army is drawn from the same socio-economic-cultural background as whence the university students come.  The average Shibir man comes from the same socioeconomic background.  And more importantly, so does the average BNP supporter / activist.  I do  not see the army deploying tanks to clear 50,000 people from Shahbag.  But by the same token, it’s hard to see indiscriminate firing on tens of thousands of anti-government demonstrators.

And it’s in this respect that I find BNP’s call for a hartal on Tuesday completely unacceptable.  I called for grown ups earlier.  I called for the Prime Minister to use her authority to wind up Shahbag, and the opposition leader to use hers to control the Islamists — Jamaat and otherwise.  Instead of help diffuse the situation, the BNP chief has added fuel to the fire.

Based on that analysis, this blog takes an unconditional stance against tomorrow’s hartal.  It is irresponsible of BNP to have called it even if it doesn’t actually want military intervention.

Of course, the hartal may come to pass without much violence.  A lot depends on the Prime Minister.  It’s interesting that the usually garrulous Awami League leader has been rather quiet of late.  It’s about time she speaks to the nation, sending a tough warning to anyone who uses religious sentiments and/or attack minorities to instigate a coup.  If she can stabilise the situation without further bloodshed, she will have earned a strong claim to re-election.

But why does Jamaat seek a military intervention?  I don’t think much of the Jamaati infiltration idea.  Rather, I think the intention is to ‘change the facts on the ground’ more than anything specific.  A military government that topples the mighty Awami League will need to spend considerable energy tackling the AL.  This will allow Jamaat some breathing space.  And that’s probably enough for Jamaat.

Moving beyond the specifics of the week, there is an ideological dimension to where this blog stands.

We have seen two strands of extreme identity politics in display recently.  I am instinctively uncomfortable with the ultra-nationalism of Shahbag.  I do not believe Shahbag is precursor to Fascism.  But I do believe Awami League has a Fascist underbelly that can try to hijack Shahbag’s nationalism.  If that were to happen, this blog will stand with anyone opposing it.  However, for all the talk about Shahbag’s intolerance, the violence and instability that threatens us is not from that corner.  Rather, it is the violence in the name of an extreme and perverse interpretation of Islam, knowingly and cynically fuelled by people like Mahmudur Rahman, that is the real risk today.  That’s the violence that can lead to a derailment of electoral politics, or threaten economic chaos.  And that’s the ideology that is incompatible with the liberalism that this blog believes in.

It may be tempting to think of Jamaat’s violence as a reaction against Shahbag.  If not for Shahbag’s glorification of Rajib Haider, will this violence have happened?

The answer is, probably yes.  It is important to separate the protests by qaumi madrassah students and Jumma-attendees defending the Prophet’s honour with the violence deployed by Jamaat.  Just because Amar Desh glorifies both does not mean they are the same.  Even had the entire Shahbag episode never happened, chances are that Jamaat would have used any means necessary to try to save its leaders.

I don’t really have anything to say about Shahbag that’s not covered here.  I am instinctively apprehensive about any Bangladeshi government getting re-elected.  I can make a strong case why AL deserves to be back in power.  But I could do the same for BNP in 2006.  Given the lack of checks-and-balances in our institutions, my default position is to oppose re-election of anyone.  As far back as 2010, I observed BNP trying to reform itself.

For all that, this blog cannot side with an action that will escalate the crisis and risk a military intevention.

I do not presume to lecture a twice-elected prime minister with three decades of experience in politics. She probably has some genius tactical move that I do not fathom. Perhaps the cynical manipulation of religious sentiment is still a vote winner.  Well, if that’s the case, then this blog takes a principled stance against Islamism, unapologetically, unambiguously.

*I used to think it’s spelt -bagh, but evidently there is no ‘h’.  And Awakening is how I am translating gana jagoron.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb popularised the term in his 2007 book The Black Swan.  His own pithy summary of the thesis is thus:

What we call here a Black Swan (and capitalize it) is an event with the following three attributes. First, it is an outlier, as it lies outside the realm of regular expectations, because nothing in the past can convincingly point to its possibility. Second, it carries an extreme ‘impact’. Third, in spite of its outlier status, human nature makes us concoct explanations for its occurrence after the fact, making it explainable and predictable.

Are we seeing a black swan / white crow event in Bangladesh?  Let’s think about it systematically.

I am not aware of any analysis by anyone that remotely pointed to the possibility of anything like a Shahbagh Awakening.  And yet, pundits have already started to retrospectively rationalise it.  So the first and third attributes are very much there.  The question is, whether there will be an extreme impact.

What’s an example of an extreme impact?  Anything that alters the pre-Shahbagh political trajectory — Awami League heading for an electoral drubbing, the unresolved issue being how the election would be organised — would classify.  Rumi Ahmed provides one example — another minus-2 attempt on the back of instability.  Is it possible?  Too early to tell.  But Rumi bhai does provide a crucial marker:

One would wait, very eagerly, to see how the next week goes in Bangladesh. If there is a relative and noticeable lull in the downward spiral, any such attempt will be less likely and this piece will sound illogically alarmist.

The corollary being that the violence yesterday — 47 dead so far — is a precursor to 2/11.

Is it?

I am not so sure.

Violence, intability, anarchy, leading to the government being toppled — that seems to be a very attractive option to Jamaat.  I am not going to comment on whether the war crimes trial process is fair or not.  If the trials are flawed, then its leaders look likely to get death sentences.  If the trials are genuinely free and above-board, then there is still a high probability that they might get death sentence.  Jamaat has known this all along.  They have tried all possible avenues — legal battles, international lobbying, pressuring its ally BNP into going into tough street agitation, backdoor negotiation with the AL.  Nothing seems to have worked.  So violence seems to be their way out.

Given the possibility of a violent reaction by Jamaat, and the risk to its own survival that any instability poses, was the government caught off guard?  Perhaps.  Incompetence is always a valid explanation.  But it need not be the only explanation.  Awami League benefits a lot, both direcetly and indirectly, from a certain amount of violence.  Directly, because it can use the violence as a pretext to take draconian measures — facebook and tweeter are blocked (albeit not fully implemented), ostensibly for public safety.  Mahmudur Rahman is an easy target (and he is probably relishing the prospect of being a ‘hero’ of the ‘resistance’ against ‘Awami fascism’).  I’ll leave the reader to think of other examples.

More important, and consequential, are the benefit AL gets indirectly from the violence.  The violence is widely blamed on Jamaat (even if most of the victims are its cadres).  It puts the BNP in a very difficult position.  Its chairperson will hold a press event later tonight.  She better put on an extraordinary performance.  Can she afford a public opprobrium by not dumping Jamaat?  Can she afford to dump Jamaat?

Politics being a zero sum game, whatever is bad for BNP is good for AL.  The ruling party stands to gain a lot from the opposition’s discomfort.  Can it gain enough to ride the Shahbagh wave to re-election?  Now, were that to happen, that would truly make Shahbagh Awakening a black swan / white crow event.

So I would not at all be surprised if the violence will be rapidly suppressed soon after the political benefits are realised.

Meanwhile, the reader might be asking, what does this violence mean for Bangladesh?

As I said last week: In case of Bangladesh, I don’t want a ‘grand sweeping away of the rat infestation’ (as a fellow blogger has put it). Rather, I want to persist with our 6% a year growth that has made lives of most Bangladesh better than any of their ancestors.  The thing is, I worried a lot more about falling off the steady path last week.  Last week’s violence, it seemed to me, involved people who take the Prophet’s honour very seriously.  This is a much wider section of the society than Jamaat.

This week, we are seeing politics-as-usual.  Well, perhaps more violent than usual.  But the difference from the norm is one of degree, not kind.  If a dozen old men with blood on their hand were to hang tomorrow, Bangladesh would not turn into a golden land (and no one made that argument anyway).  Similarly, violent reactions about them, on their own, will not turn Bangladesh into a failed state.

Note the ‘on their own’.  It’s not clear whether the violence is planned from the top, or whether the local leaders are making their own decisions.  Fragmentation, and Naxalisation, of Jamaat is something that needs to be analysed.